Bourdieu's Habitus, Social Class and the Spatial Worlds of Visually Impaired Children

Abstract

This paper argues that the 'new' social geographies of impairment literature present a sophisticated analysis of the socio-spatiality of the impaired body, but one that now needs developing in two ways. First, it is suggested that the literature has focused on the embodiment of socio-spatial exclusion more than it has focused on resistance to it. Secondly, where the literature has analysed resistance to socio-spatial exclusion, it has done so in general terms (i.e. by referring to 'disabled people'). The literature has said less about whether and how factors such as social class background might predispose some impaired people (but not others) to resist their embodiment of disability and socio-spatial exclusion and less about the way in which impaired people develop ways of navigating the 'off limits' urban spaces that they now wish to use. The paper uses the work of Pierre Bourdieu to construct a theoretical framework within which some empirical data, concerning these underresearched issues, are analysed.

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